Update 10.14am: The Department of Justice insist the former Tánaiste Frances Fitzgerald could not do anything about the Garda legal strategy to discredit Maurice McCabe.

Acting Secretary General of the Department Oonagh McPhillips said that Ms Fitzgerald could have convened her senior officials to query the strategy at the O'Higgins Commission.

However, speaking at an Oireachtas Committee, Ms McPhillips insists the then-Minister could not have tried to stop the former Garda Commissioner's approach.

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"If the Minister was to express that view to the Commissioner in relation to a matter before a Commission of Investigation, that could be deemed, subsequently, to have been interfering in the Commissioner's rights before the Commission," she said.

"And obviously if the issue of disciplinary proceedings, or any kind of proceedings, arose subsequent to the findings of the Commission, the Minister would have compromised herself."

Acting Secretary General of the Department Oonagh McPhillips. Pic: Oireachtas.ie

Over €1m has been awarded by the High Court to a group of Portuguese workers who claimed they lived in "terrible conditions" at a "work camp” in Tipperary when they were building a section of the N7 motorway in 2007 and 2008.